The Reigate Boys
by Regency
Summary: AU. When he isn't wrangling his younger brother, Mycroft Holmes occupies a very minor position in the British Government. When not engaged in either of those pursuits, he wrangles madness of an entirely different sort: a brood of four ingenious sons.
1. Chapter 1

Author: Regency

Title: The Reigate Boys

Pairing: None

Spoilers: None

Rating: G/Everyone

Summary: When he isn't wrangling his younger brother, Mycroft Holmes occupies a very _minor_ position in the British Government. When not engaged in either of those pursuits, he wrangles madness of an entirely different sort: a brood of four ingenious sons.

Author's Notes: This is one of those 'I don't know where this came from' kind of stories. I just like the idea of Mycroft as a devoted father who has a really difficult job and is rearing children as brilliant and irrepressible as he and Sherlock must have been. I blame some of the Mycroft fans on Tumblr who write some very credible meta about Mycroft being the primary parental influence in Sherlock's life.

Disclaimer: I don't own any characters recognizable as being from _Sherlock_. They are the property of their actors, producers, writers, and studios, not me. No copyright infringement was intended and no money was made in the writing or distribution of this story. It was good, clean fun.

~!~

There are those who won't believe it, but Mycroft Holmes is a good father. He is a father of four or five, depending on the day, and his house is never quiet, for the phone is always ringing. If not the landline, then his mobile vibrates with texts from the littlest on his new invention or the eldest on a curious case at hospital. Mycroft cannot always give his presence to his children, but he can give his eye and ear.

"Papa, I understand how caterpillars become butterflies. I think I can make a beetle do something like that." Mycroft isn't sure it can be done, but if it can, Cavendish, all of nine years old, will do it.

"Dad, I had an odd one in Emergency. Seemed like poison but not administered by mouth or direct contact. Good suit, public school, not posh, though. Bit strange, I thought. You may want to make enquiries." Sherwin, twenty, is a capable physician in training, almost wasted on it. Mycroft knows better than to underestimate his inductive instinct.

"Consider it done."

His middlemost sons are equally gifted. The elder, Bayard, shadows a colleague of Mycroft's at Whitehall. By sixteen, he has accrued a velvet bag of secrets he carries everywhere with him. Lysander, the younger at twelve, still attends school and excels ahead of his peers. He tops his year with ease and, though he faces opposition from those of lesser talent, he keeps his head above the fray. He is so like Sherlock in aspect, it discomfits his father. They clash the most, but the boy is no less beloved than his brothers.

Mycroft is a father to four boys, sometimes five, and he loves each to the farthest borders of his capacity for devotion. There is something wrong with Mycroft, perhaps even with Sherlock, but there is _nothing_ wrong with Mycroft's sons. No one to question it ever asks twice.


	2. Chapter 2

"Still sitting at your father's knee, I see." Sherlock's twigs an eyebrow upon encountering the lot of them at New Scotland Yard on an errand. Mycroft regrets not leaving his brood to wait in the car. His brother can be vicious and he'd prefer to spare the younger ones.

"Still an impotent dick, Uncle. _Quelle surprise_."

"Bayard." Mycroft needn't waste breath on lines of reprimand. Baz _knows_ better.

"Apologies."

"One would think your sons would be better trained," Sherlock offers, droll and baiting.

"With you as archetype, how could they have turned out any other way?"

Baz turns to his elder brother in feigned horror. "Did he just call us useless ruffians?"

"I felt the implication," Sherwin replies.

"Father, I'm appalled."

"You're quite something, all right," Mycroft remarks, exasperated though somewhat amused at the interplay between his sons.

Sherwin, better known as Ian, draws his mouth into a crooked line. He's the crown prince of stirring his siblings to strife without a word said. Mycroft is unsure from where he inherited that trait.

"Don't instigate, Ian."

Ian blinks in guileless fashion, widening his blue-grey eyes to marbles. "I've not said anything."

Mycroft levies the tip of his brolly in censure. "That's what I'm referring to."

He leaves off. "Spoilsport."

Lestrade peers in bewildered dismay at the murder of Holmeses occupying his squad room without invitation. "Why are there so many of you is what I want to know."

Sherlock adjusts his gloves, never having removed them and now having no plans to do so. _Always the sulking child_, Mycroft thinks, fond.

"Mycroft felt an irresistible urge to nest when I was a boy and never stopped."

The detective inspector continues to look flustered at the men scrutinizing his team. "I can see that. Must take some kind of woman to keep house for five of you."

Baz slumps onto a cluttered desk nearby, pointedly ignoring Mycroft's disapproving glance at his poor carriage. "Nah, Da did it on his own." He retains the accent of an Irish governess Mycroft no longer employs.

"Oh?" Lestrade offers as sterling commentary.

Sherlock smirks. John Watson affects a puzzled air. _Goldfish_,_ the lot of them._ This is one reason among many that he has so many children. At least they've been raised with the ability hold a decent conversation. He has a strong relationship with his sons' mothers, intelligence operatives who are less than maternal yet enviably kind, as well as intellectually keen. They are rarely more than a text message from the boys' reach.

"I have never cared for the constraints of matrimony, Detective Inspector. Compromise is…not my strong suit." Not in personal matters, at any rate. In politics, everything is Mycroft's strong suit.

"But parenthood is?" Lestrade sounds sceptical, if skirting the narrow edge of what politeness dictates.

"You've met my brother."

Sherlock hisses, "Not your firstborn, Mycroft," sounding very much like Cavendish with a tooth ache.

"Depending on the day," Ian contributes whilst absently surveying the contents of his mobile.

"Wait until he needs something again," Lysander murmurs _sotto voce_ from his place at his father's hip. Sherlock's hackles rise visibly. Mycroft heaves an internal sigh. The only encounter more tiresome than one involving his younger brother is one involving his younger brother and his miniature, Lysander. Mycroft would like to forget how much his third son takes after Sherlock, but he never gets to for very long.

"I won't have to wait much. This case is not your problem, Sherlock."

"It's my case. You won't take it from me."

"It wasn't yours to begin with. There was an unfortunate instance of crossed wires which resulted in it being assigned to the Met rather than brought to my attention."

"But it _was_ brought to the Met, which puts it under my purview."

"No."

"Yes."

"No, and I won't play this childish game with you. You will not get your way this time and if you continue to try my patience, I'll have Ian solve it and no one will be happy."

"Least of all the doctor who really isn't interested in all this," interjects the young man in question.

"You raised a doctor. Fascinating." Sherlock's simpering condescension gives all concerned a headache, if the sudden epidemic of temple rubbing in the near vicinity is anything to go by.

"Your bitterness is delicious," quips his second son.

"Bayard."

"Sorry I'm not sorry."

"This is why I keep you apart." Mycroft palms the bamboo handle of his brolly in agitation. _Worse than Christmas dinner._

"Afraid I'll unduly influence the children, brother dear?"

"The proof is in the poor behaviour."

"I'm behaving, Papa." Cavendish peers up with large, bright eyes and Mycroft is expectedly melted. He brushes down his youngest son's downy curls, not entirely disappointed that they burnish to red gold in the light yet no less pleased by how dark they are otherwise.

"Of course you are."

"You aren't still falling for the same act I perpetrated on you when I was small."

"Evidently, I am. It might still work if your personality hadn't outpaced your capacity to come across as harmless."

Sherlock's mouth snaps shut to let his glare carry the weight of his disdain.

"Do go on, _petit frère_. I'm certain Detective Inspector Lestrade and Sargent Donovan have nothing better to do than stand witness to your theatrics in their place of work. I am after all awash in recreational time and would not in the least prefer to spend my evening in the company of my children instead of squabbling with you."

"The case is mine," Sherlock ground out despite blotchy points of heat burning away at his cheeks.

"I'll get you another case. Let this one go."

"No."

"Very well." Mycroft gestures to his eldest son whose mouth immediately pulls in a scowl. For all this his deductive capability has made him invaluable as a clinician, he abhors the mysteries that bring his namesake joy. Nevertheless, he is his father's son and mulishly obedient. "Your conclusions."

Ian nods and produces an immaculate folder from the satchel he uses to tote his things to hospital. "The second-best receptionist. The motive was jealousy, professional and personal. She discovered that Tulane was engaged in an affair with the CFO and receiving holiday bonuses of twice the amount throughout the year. She wanted the job, the lover, and the perqs. Upon realizing there was no conceivable way for her to obtain all she desired, she resorted to murder."

Sherlock grimaces, bored immediately and unable to find fault in his nephew's deductions. "Why would the Home Office care about a crime of passion?"

"A civilian killed one of ours on a jealous lark," Baz summarizes for the slower thinkers among them.

Sherlock's eyes gleam as his grimace fades. "No affair."

"None whatsoever," Mycroft intercedes. Bayard hasn't yet perfected the art of discretion to his father's satisfaction. "Merely a careless handler and more careless operative. Dead now, both of them."

"What were they investigating," Lestrade hazards.

"Beyond the bounds of this investigation, I'm afraid, but suffice it to say that while our ranks have lost fine personnel, nothing of value was compromised."

"Heart-warming as always, Mycroft."

"Only in aid of the truth."

The two brothers engage in a protracted stare-off until Sherlock snorts and turns away. Not to say that he concedes but that he finds Mycroft's posturing dull now. Baz makes a rude gesture at his uncle's turned back just the same and receives a swat on back the head for it. _Are they all mere iterations of my brother?_ Mycroft wonders if any of the boys he has raised might turn out any other way.

Lestrade clears his throat, still appearing rather shell-shocked. "Am I the only one a little…thrown by there being so many?"

"Not the only one," Sargent Donovan opines in careful quiet tones. Her constant antagonism toward Sherlock irks Mycroft, though no more than Sherlock's open antagonism toward the world. Mycroft, too, might make himself small in appearance if he found there to be a gang of daggers that might be aimed at him where he had thought there to be only one.

"My brother's the human equivalent of an irate hen. Every time something shocking occurs, he hysterically lays an egg." Sherlock gestures disinterestedly toward the boys. "Meet scrambled, poached, hard-boiled, and sunny side up."

"He knows four methods of egg preparation. Huh, I'm surprised he managed to keep all four in his head at once; he must have borrowed the space."

"Baz!" Ian chortles, attempting and failing at stridency.

Cavendish hides his face in Mycroft's knee. Lysander sniffs, his thin lips twisting upward at the ends as he continues his solemn examination of the squad room and its occupants.

"Now, gentleman, that's no way to behave. "

"Sorry, Papa," Cavendish answers on behalf of his far less remorseful siblings.

"With that lovely parting shot, we'll take our leave." Mycroft nods to the squinting Met officers and to his brother and John. "I thank you for your assistance. Your patience and cooperation in this matter are much appreciated." He begins the arduous task of herding his young men toward the exit. Ian grabs Baz who has been perusing Sargent Donovan with far too glad an eye. Mycroft divests Lysander of not one but two forensics reports and placidly returns to Lestrade a set of pilfered handcuffs he encountered in Cavendish's coat pockets. The fingerprint set and warrant card he allows the boys to keep. There ought to be some reward for thinking circles around those in positions of power. In Mycroft's experience, there are many.


	3. Chapter 3

Mycroft enters his apartments at close of week to be met by the clangour and clamour of his sons at their business. He hangs up his coat and enters the den.

Ian sits in dominance of the sofa, his medical texts spread over the cushions and spilling over the coffee table, mingled with borrowed tomes from the Holmes library and what Mycroft suspects are loaned references from Sherlock.

Baz holds court over open dossiers and ministerial boxes stacked in alternating fashion, green, black with a red stripe, red, and altogether black on the floor before the hearth. Mycroft examines the lot thoughtfully. He has thus far left his son to his devices in pursuit of his practical experience, but he does wonder if perhaps too many liberties are being allowed or perhaps are being taken by his colleague. The mind of a Holmes is known for its ability to multitask and Bartleby would have taken such an offer to its natural extreme.

Lysander and Cavendish appear to have hied elsewhere for the duration and their machinations are audible throughout the house. He makes a note to check on their progress before the call for supper comes.

Mycroft casts his eyes from his eldest sons to the skulking figure staring out the front window.

"Dr. Watson is out with another companion, I take it?"

Sherlock stiffens his posture and raises his chin in abject defiance. "I wouldn't know."

"You wouldn't be here were he in danger and it's obvious you haven't got a case on; I'd have heard if you had. What brings you to my humble abode?"

"I was told I've an open invitation to join my…your family at will. Am I mistaken?" He clutches at his sleeves like they're the security blanket he once could not have been seen without.

"Hardly. Be at ease, brother mine. And do remove your coat, you'll pass out in front of the fire if you keep it on."

Sherlock reluctantly surrenders the garment to Mycroft's waiting hands. When Mycroft returns from hanging it beside his own in the coat cupboard, his brother is still standing in the middle of the room, stiff as a board. Mycroft hasn't seen Sherlock this uncertain since he brought Sherwin home to meet he and Mummy at two weeks old. The boy had been intrigued, and then tentative, and finally enraged that Mycroft would try to replace him with a more biddable model. All Mycroft and Mummy's attempts to explain otherwise had been in vain, and so began the brothers' lifelong antipathy.

"Would you care for a drink?"

Sherlock nods, scanning the room in his usual fashion for tells. He is never without his cognitive tools to lead him true. He seeks treachery wherever he goes and most often wherever he is welcome. He seeks reason to reject the world he feels has rejected him.

"Tea or scotch?" Mycroft would much rather pour than steep, but he will do whichever his brother asks tonight. He has his family together. What's a little legwork?

"Tea."

Mycroft rises to do as requested, tapping two fingers across Bayard's crown as he passes to summon his second son along.

They enter the kitchen which the housekeeper has left in pristine condition. "The kettle, if you will."

Baz hums in the affirmative and moves to set out the casual family service. Mycroft unearths the loose leaf and sugar. Baz the milk, the biscuits. Father and son work in tranquil synchrony to prepare the tea and fill the tray.

"Two sugars for your uncle."

"And a dollop of honey."

Mycroft inclines his chin in approval. "Well-spotted."

"He doesn't eat properly. Fools his body into functioning with sweets."

"Your brother would have a field day examining him."

"They all would. He's a walking experiment in malnutrition and chemical dependence."

Mycroft hums. "Perhaps it would be best not to tell him so."

Baz cants his head. "Understood."

Mycroft stirs the four cups before him in counter clockwise threes. "Tell me, is Bartleby treating you well?"

Baz starts in on his tea, setting a hip against the counter. "He's an exemplar of what I'd like to do in a few years."

"But better, of course."

Baz's dark brows beetle as he grins. "Naturally."

Mycroft raises his cup to that in kind.

"Does he seem to appreciate your attention?"

"He's a narcissist, he appreciates any attention, the more fawning the more winsome."

Mycroft stretches his lips in a self-satisfied grin. _Ever the clever one_. "Not that you'll say as much where there's any chance of it being repeated."

"God, no. I like my position, I intend to make more of it than this. It wouldn't do to make enemies this early in the game."

"Wise of you to note that."

Baz wipes milky tea from his lips and shifts on his feet, uncertain as Mycroft immediately notices.

"Papa…Da, are you upset with me? Has Bartl—Mr. Bartleby said something to you?" What he means to ask, if Mycroft interprets the anxious curling of his lips well, is _have I failed a test?_ Which, of course he hasn't, because Holmeses don't. Any failing mark is far outweighed by the benefits they bring.

"I should think not. You've been entrusted with ministerial boxes, including one Budget Box, if I observed correctly in the den. You're well on your way to becoming indispensable in the eyes of one Maximus Bartleby. However, I am concerned that perhaps you are not the one seeing the most benefit in our current arrangement. There may be a more beneficial match to be made."

"What for? I'm doing damned good work here, Da. Ya can't make me move now!"

Mycroft staves off further protests with a hand wave. "I can't make you do anything, you're right. As I was going to say, I believe Bartleby is taking advantage of you by plying you with a greater number of duties than is ideal. You've still got your A-levels to think about and university besides. It would never do for you to get behind in aid of an influential but lazy permanent secretary. There are better things ahead of you than this."

"I _like_ this, Da."

"And you can still like it once you've finished university. We both know you're destined for greater."

"Maybe I'm not. Maybe I'm happy in the shadows of so-called great men. I don't need the credit, so long as the right things are done." His son swallows back on more telling words, knowing he has said enough. _Were Sherlock and I ever this obvious to Mummy?_ But of course they had been. She had been a detective for the French Police before she became a mother. In her own words, her sons are her greatest mysteries. At last he understands.

Mycroft laces his fingers together on the island. "That's altruistic of you."

"Of both of us," Baz rebuts.

"You needn't follow in my footsteps to gain my approval. You have it."

"I never doubted that."

"I'd like to believe you."

"Then, believe me. I'm not Uncle, I haven't any reason to lie to you."

"I won't see one of my children run ragged on a lark. You're worth more and capable of more to greater ends."

"These ends are enough for the time being," Baz retorts and that, as they say, is that.

Baz helps himself to more tea. They have both been helping themselves. Save the cups designated for Sherlock and Ian, the teapot is nearing depletion.

"Looks like we'll never to heat another pot."

"So it does."

Mycroft and Baz return to the den to see Sherlock sprawled in Mycroft's preferred tufted leather armchair with a sheaf of papers marked Confidential trapped in his hands. Mycroft hands over mother duties to Baz.

"Ask first, Sherlock," he reprimands upon liberating the fluttering sheets already re-ordered into some system only Sherlock can divine. "My apologies, dear." Baz takes the bent and annotated briefs with long-suffering patience, no doubt swallowing back a hailstorm of invective his father would not readily approve of. Mycroft is reminded once again why he doesn't gather all his boys in one place often.

Sherlock, heaped in his sulk as he is, takes his tea when it is offered and slurps it noisily just to see Mycroft's face contort in a grimace.

"Charming as always, Sherlock."

Mycroft takes up the chair opposite his brother in front of the fireplace. Tonight will not be the calm meeting of like minds he had hoped for, but it is something.

"You still haven't answered my earlier inquiry. What brings you?"

"Boredom. Mrs. Hudson is out. John is out. Lestrade is refusing to answer my texts. Molly Hooper is refusing me entry to the morgue."

"So break in," Bayard counters, already half-lost amid the pages of the newest Exchequer budget plan.

"Dull."

"You can't break in," Ian concludes, rubbing his eyes between hasty illegible scribbling in very old margins. "Well done, Molly."

"You wouldn't say that if you'd met her."

Ian blinks at his uncle, nonplussed.

"You _have_ met her."

"You've never so much as asked where I train."

"You train at Bart's?" Sherlock spills his legs to the carpet and leans forward eagerly. "You can get me into the morgue."

"I could! But I won't." Ian turns to a page detailing possible complications that could result from compound fractures.

"Why not?"

"You're rude."

"Your brother—that one," he gestures at Baz, "—is rude and you take no fault with him."

"He doesn't give my father migraines. You do. Are as we speak, in fact."

Mycroft rights himself and drops his hand from his eyes. He'd thought he was being rather subtle.

"Mycroft is always suffering. It's his preferred setting. The moral high ground and the suffering saint. How apt considering all the suffering he causes."

Baz lifts his head from the discretionary spending breakdown Mycroft recalls forwarding to the Queen herself two days ago. "Can't you be bored someplace else? Your blathering makes it impossible to hear myself think."

"Hear, hear," Ian echoes.

Sherlock harrumphs in offense, pulling his limbs back onto the tanned leather cushion he has claimed for his own.

Yawning, Ian scratches his head and rises to stretch. "Granda-mere has said she expects you at Reigate this Christmas, Uncle."

Sherlock pales yet feigns to feel no intimidation at all, his delicate teacup cradled in his clutching hands. "Make my excuses."

"Not bloody likely."

Mycroft sighs at Baz's appalling manners.

"Mummy wants to meet John."

"They can meet just as well over Skype."

"Sherlock, you know Mummy abhors cold communication. Were she in better health, she would have come to visit Baker Street herself." A necessary fabrication.

"Our mother is in perfect health. She travelled to Geneva and Vienna for the UN just this spring."

_So you do follow her travels, brother dear._

"She detests London weather."

"Better that she doesn't visit, then." He makes a poor show of hiding his disappointment. Much as Lysander does when his classmates simply can't understand or Cavendish when they simply won't.

"For you, I wager, she'd make an exception if you were only somewhat more welcoming to the idea."

"Perhaps she should visit you instead. You've more than enough space to house the remaining royal family for a week." He returns to his examination of Mycroft's apartments, despite having certainly inspected the residence from top to bottom in Mycroft's absence. Sherlock's curiosity regularly outpaces his contempt of the subject of that curiosity.

"Hardly. I occupy a minor position in the British government and keep a residence commensurate with my status."

"Bollocks to that," Baz thinks it vital to say.

It is Ian's turn to growl as he flips the page of one of his medical texts. "Button it, you utter jackhole, some of us are trying to study."

Mycroft ignores the ensuing fraternal squabble. Bayard takes being ignored as poorly as Sherlock.

"Your progeny are in-fighting," Sherlock observes in wry fascination.

"I hadn't noticed. Come see our mother. She hardly ever gets the entire family together at once and she _is_ aging, Sherlock. There may not be many more events such as this." An unnecessary fabrication Sherlock cops to at once. Mycroft doesn't regret the offending hiss it yields.

"Don't attempt to guilt me into this, Mycroft. She's not even seventy. Our grandmother lived to be 103. There's time."

"Why are you so averse to gathering for a meal? She only wants to see how you are for herself and meet your Dr. Watson."

"He isn't _my_ Dr. Watson."

"I daresay that won't be true once Mummy has a hold of him." Their mother has a habit of fostering strays of the human variety. When the widowed groundskeeper of the Holmes estate died in an automobile accident, Evelyn Vernet thought nothing of taking in his young daughter and putting her through school. There has not been a family event in the fifteen years since the girl has not attended. John Watson will likely fare no differently, of which Sherlock is no doubt aware.

"John has a family," Sherlock proffers in lieu of admitting defeat. _Forever a sore loser, little Sherlock._

"Considering the tattered state of it, I hardly think he'd be opposed to joining another."

The sudden re-appearance of Lysander and Cavendish puts paid to Sherlock's undoubtedly cutting reply. They've changed from their school uniforms to their laboratory garb of disposable paper suits and protective glasses and gloves. They favour the oldest depictions of Martians Mycroft can recall.

"Papa, we did it!"

Mycroft sets his tea aside to see what has his youngest sons in such an uproar.

"What have we here?"

Cavendish presents with cupped hands whilst Lysander looks on in prideful accomplishment. They two of are twin live wires of celebration, vibrating on a frequency of conquest Mycroft knows too well from youth.

"Well?"

After a gentle shove from Lysander, Cavendish parts his hands to show his work to Mycroft, and reluctantly, Sherlock.

There is a very lively beetle seated in the crux of his palms perched atop a disintegrating chrysalis. Its ordinary wings flutter in extraordinary, exuberant orange and black. Colours Mycroft has never seen in such a creature. Confounded, he purses his lips. He is almost certain that isn't possible in nature, though only almost. Regrettably, entomology is not one of his strong suits.

"What precisely did you do," Sherlock asks once he has deigned to give his nephews' display his attention, once he realises how sincerely it's wanted.

Cavendish takes a turn for shyer and withdraws his tiniest of subjects to his chest as if to safeguard the fragile creature he's shown them. Lysander grasps his shoulder to pull his youngest brother to his side.

"Genetic admixture. We made a hybrid."

Sherlock is all interest now, leant on edge of his seat. "How? Show me everything. Have you taken notes?" His questions come quickly and Lysander answers in turn what Cavendish is too timid to stammer out. When Sherlock demands to see their laboratory the smaller boys are too happy to oblige him.

It's the work of three minutes and Mycroft's den is a bed of quiet once again, he and Baz and Ian left staring after the perfect storm of intellect that has come and gone.

"He's insufferable," Baz whinges, looking pleadingly at his father.

Ian cuffs Baz's ear in blithe affection. "He's family."

Mycroft contentedly sips his tea as they descend into a riotous shoving match on the floor.

"Indeed."

Mycroft Holmes has four or five sons depending on the day. Tonight, he'll set the dinner table for one more.


End file.
